Jaws' singular financial performance is ultimately a matter of the craft of the film-makers involved. Not the art, the craft. Jaws is an extraordinarily well made entertainment…. There isn't an ounce of dead wood in it; it is the sum total of thousands of 'effects' (special and otherwise) tested and tuned to produce the desired response in the audience. Jaws is a landmark of modern cinematic engineering.

It is, therefore, something like the ultimate Hollywood movie. Not only does it represent the tradition of film as entertainment product (as opposed to film as personal statement), but it is also, like many memorable Hollywood entertainments of the past, an example of 'film as a contact sport.' Watching it one is aware that, as Howard Hawks once said in another context, 'that stuff's good, and that stuff's hard to do.' It doesn't matter with it means; in this...